Moonage Daydream

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on October 13, 2022.

(M) ★★★★

Director: Brett Morgen.

David Bowie: sucking stars through his nose.

A truly great music doco or biopic captures the essence of an artist. This is why Rocketman was so impressive, but Bohemian Rhapsody less so. It's why Morgen's Cobain: Montage of Heck and Asif Kapadia's Amy are so brilliant. It's tough to match the subject matter to the delivery, to drill down into the core of the musician and excavate the truth in a way that befits them, but it really separates the masterpieces from the mediocre.

Moonage Daydream, an hallucinogenic collage that examines the life and career of David Bowie, is almost a masterpiece, and it works largely because it understands its subject in a deep way. Through a fascinating mixture of style and substance, the film captures the essence of the polymath born David Robert Jones.

Covering Bowie's career from Ziggy Stardust to his electronica-infused work of the late '90s, it explores some his key eras through an interweaving series of interviews and musical interludes. All the while, it blends its chronology with restless visuals - live footage and talk show appearances are interspersed with snippets from silent films and psychedelic animations, while Bowie's own artworks sit alongside candid snaps and never-before-seen clips from his archives.

The key weapon here is Bowie himself and his surprisingly open and self-analytical nature as an interviewee. These chats provide cutting insight into each of his phases and characters, allowing Bowie to tell his own story from beyond the grave. It's fascinating that these interviews exist, given Bowie's reputation for being enigmatic and elusive. It seems that wasn't actually the case, and collected here, they make for a frank self-assessment of a remarkable career and a mind that was always searching and creating. 

The thoughtfulness and creativity of Bowie are the essential ingredients at the heart of Moonage Daydream. Like the artist himself, the film bounces from style to style, from one idea to the next, endlessly inventing and finding new ways to share the art at its core. 

Coupled with the music - an often explosive mix of songs and sounds from his stunningly diverse back catalogue - the film is wonderfully immersive. It's like wandering around the David Bowie Is exhibition on a mild acid trip, with Bowie himself in your headphones, narrating your visit.

The only thing holding Moonage Daydream back is its pacing. It either needs to be half an hour shorter or three hours longer. Moments of repetition become aggravating - there's a surprising amount of footage that appears more than once in the film. This makes some segments drag on, and given its visual eccentricities, the doco could have packed more punch in a more concise runtime. Having said that, it opens up a fascinating insight that leaves you begging for more. Bowie did so much in his lifetime that the film makes you feel like untold riches lie between each costume change and musical reinvention.

For this reason, Moonage Daydream won't be the last word on Bowie that we see on the screen. But it certainly sets the bar high.